Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for recording and reading an image information wherein an image containing a certain form and data is recorded on each frame of a microfilm and a desired datum is selected and read from the microfilm. The invention further relates to a microfilm, a printer and a reader used in the aforementioned system.
It is a common practice to store informations recorded in a variety of tickets, registers of fixed assets, slips, cards for the management of customers or cards for recording patients comming to a hospital in a computer so that data are put out from the computer and printed on a microfilm in a certain form. However, in the conventional technology, when it is desired to extract a desired datum from an image printed on the microfilm, the image is projected by a reader and the desired datum is read visually by the operator who inputs the datum to the computer through a keyboard. Cumbersome operations are required for reading data from the projected image and to selected the desired darum.
On the other hand, it is possible to read the data recorded on a microfilm by OCR (optical character reader) to input the data into a computer. In such a case, it becomes necessary to discriminate the region in which data are printed and to discriminate the form and partition lines of the form in addition to the discrimination of the sizes of letters, pitches of letters, kinds of letters (Chinese characters or numerals) and founts of letters (Ming's style characters or Gothic style letters). There arises the problem that the operation speed of reading and coding the letters is too low, or that the accuracy in reading operation is lowered.
If the form recorded on the microfilm is fixed, it suffices to read the predetermined position of the microfilm by OCR. However, when image informations are recorded in different forms, a desired datum cannot be read by simply reading the predetermined position of the microfilm by OCR.